Monday 15 December 2008

BlackMatch Report on Finals Day at the New Zealand National Match Racing Championships 2008

by David Swete

With the huge task of beating some of the big names in international sailing today, we came all so close to qualifying for the semi finals but narrowly missed out to local legend Laurie Jury. We managed convincing wins over the eventual champion Dean Barker and also against three times olympic gold medalist Ben Ainslie, but were well defeated by match racing legend Rod Davis. We were left ruing some of our earlier losses in the regatta and although we managed wins against all of the competitors in the regatta including all of the top seeds, we couldn't manage a win against the highly regarded Jury throughout the regatta who was a deserved semi finalist.

Dean went on to an emphatic 3-0 victory over Ben Ainslie and BlackMatch would like to congratulate the Emirates Team New Zealand Crew on an awesome win. We are happy with the way we were sailing here in Auckland and it has been a great preparation for the Monsoon Cup in Malaysia next week. The Monsoon Cup is the finale of the World Tour and a win there could see us elevated to 2nd on the World Match Racing Tour. This weeks sailing has been unbelievably competitive and we are hoping the level of sailing here in New Zealand has put us in good stead for our upcoming event.

BlackMatch would like to again thank their sponsors FedEx Express and Line 7 New Zealand and also the support of our yacht club the RNZYS.

BlackMatch Racing

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